Key to long life: Don't stop

MARCIA LANE

Friday

May 21, 2010 at 12:04 AM

At 95, Marian Clark ranked as a youngster at the Centenarian Luncheon on Thursday.

"She knows more about the law than most lawyers," St. Augustine Mayor Joe Boles, himself a lawyer, said as he greeted Clark at River House, where the luncheon presented by the St. Johns County Council on Aging and the Social Security Administration was held.

Clark worked for Judge Richard Weinberg in St. Johns County for many years. Then, her title was secretary.

"You were a judicial assistant and didn't even know it, Marian," Boles kidded Clark, referring to the current job title for her former position. "She was always calm and composed; that's what has led to her longevity."

Clark had a secret of her own -- she won't be 95 until Saturday. Originally from Rhode Island ("Little Rhodey," she joked), Clark came to St. Augustine in the 1930s.

If the more than 70 centenarians and nonagenarians at Thursday's luncheon have one thing in common, it's probably a sense of humor. And a certain joie de vivre.

Cathy Brown, who heads up the Council on Aging, believes one of the reasons for the number of St. Johns County residents who are age 100 plus might be where they live. But, she says, the number also "speaks to living with humor and grace."

"When you talk to them, you'll find they're active, they read, they keep up with what's happening in the world. It's the key to staying in the game," Brown said.

Nina Johnson at 105 has both the sense of humor and the activity.

Her daughter, Jonnie Long, urges people to ask about her mother's tricycle.

That tricycle is how Johnson gets around the Westminster Woods retirement community. She uses it for one of her favorite activities -- volunteering with Seniors on a Mission, a group that helps other residents in Westminster Woods.

Among her other pleasures are "being with people" and corresponding with friends. The only problem with corresponding is that the recipients "keep dying on me," she said. When she first moved to the Woods she wrote to 35 or so; now the number is around 12. And while family sends letters, including daughter Long's daughters, "They're getting old, too."

She's a go-getter. When she was in her early 50s and her children were grown, she told her husband she wanted to go to school and "be a nurse. He told me, 'Be a nurse.'" She took his advice, got her degree and became part of the nursing profession.

Her advice for growing older: "To not stop. If you stop, you're dead. When the Grim Reaper comes for me, he'll have to chase me on my bicycle."

Pauline Benson, now 103, can put "venturesome" in her list of qualities.

She was the woman's page editor of a paper in Los Angeles. She met her husband while helping out the lonely hearts columnist.

During World War II, she came home from work one day and told her new husband, "If I weren't married, I'd join the service." Her husband told her, "Don't let me stop you."

After hearing a Navy recruiter one day, she came home and once again told her husband, "If I weren't married, I'd join the service." He told her he hadn't been kidding, that she should join up. An officer during World War I, he said the experience would be good for her.

"I married in the spring and in the fall I joined the Navy," Benson said.

She went in the WAVES as an apprentice seaman and came out as a lieutenant. "I kept my nose clean and I didn't get in any trouble," Benson said.

After the war, the couple had two children, and she later became a dietician and a teacher. At the age of 72, she began working on her Ph.D.

She often travels with her daughter, Pam Hess, who conducts line dancing classes. They live in Interlachen. At 98, Benson decided to give line dancing a try because it looked easy.

"If a friend and I hadn't been there, she would have fallen on her bum," Hess said.

When it comes to longevity, Benson thinks: "The most important thing is to pick out the right grandparents."

Her advice for life: "Keep looking forward instead of backward."

For Pressley Walker, now 100, St. Johns County was the place to retire after a lifetime of travel.

Born in Jackson, Miss., he grew up in Atlanta and graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology. His first job when he graduated was with a chain belt company in Wisconsin. The weather, he said, was quite a contrast to growing up in the South.

A mechanical engineer, he "traveled all over the eastern part of the United States and some of the west."

He thought a moment. "I did a lot of traveling."

During World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy, first in Charleston, S.C., then in San Francisco and spots "scattered from the West Coast to the East Coast."

His advice for life: "I don't know whether you should try to improve your memory or forget it."

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BY THE NUMBERS

Aging In St. Johns County

People 100 or older -- 189

People 92 and older -- 1,042

Source: Social Security

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